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DevOps is a culture, not a role

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Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#2
Having worked on over 100 DevOps initiatives, I'm inclined to disagree.

8 years into DevOps, automation, cloud computing etc, it's time to accept that DevOps is a specialism and a function that companies - especially big ones - need to put into place in order to adopt the principles.

See here for further thoughts - https://devops.com/im-happy-devops-engineer-job-title/

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#3

Having worked on over 100 DevOps initiatives, I'm inclined to disagree. 8 years into DevOps, automation, cloud computing etc, it's time to accept that DevOps is a specialism and a function that companies - especially big ones - need to put into place in order to adopt the principles. See here for further thoughts - https://devops.com/im-happy-devops-engineer-job-title/

totally agree, don't see the point of the article

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#4
I do not know. We always had "DevOPS" aka sysadmin that knew C,perl and bunch of others. Then it became too much for a single person to know everything and we invented "more ops" and "more programmer". Now we have better tools albeit more complex and we have decided that we again can have this "DevOPS" person whatever that means.

But again we are facing this dilemma when there are literally thousands of different tools and ecosystems and you just simply cannot be an EXPERT or even ADVANCED in most of them. We should clearly define what we expect from the role and the candidate. We can't waste other people's time by hiring for DevOPS when we clearly want a PowerShell programmer,windows administrator and database admin in a single package

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#5
post #4

I do not know. We always had "DevOPS" aka sysadmin that knew C,perl and bunch of others. Then it became too much for a single person to know everything and we invented "more ops" and "more programmer". Now we have better tools albeit more complex and we have decided that we again can have this "DevOPS" person whatever that means. But again we are facing this dilemma when there are literally thousands of different too…

> But again we are facing this dilemma when there are literally thousands of different tools and ecosystems and you just simply cannot be an EXPERT or even ADVANCED in most of them.

Though there are only a handful of ideas and principles, and all of these thousands of different tools are just reimplementations of some of them, and usually not too fancy at that.

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#6

Having worked on over 100 DevOps initiatives, I'm inclined to disagree. 8 years into DevOps, automation, cloud computing etc, it's time to accept that DevOps is a specialism and a function that companies - especially big ones - need to put into place in order to adopt the principles. See here for further thoughts - https://devops.com/im-happy-devops-engineer-job-title/

I disagree with your disagreement. There's nothing we do under the umbrella of "DevOps" that wasn't part of competent service ownership twenty years ago. I read your article and the point that stood out for me was the notion that the skills to drive tools like chef, puppet are somehow new and different. But I know better, because although I use those tools today, back in the day we used cfengine and a bunch of declaratively/injectively configured shell & perl scripts to achieve basically exactly the same effect.

Back then we called this "systems administration". But we were most definitely working with developers and running the SDLC across silos.

It's nothing new, it's just got a label.

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#7
post #5
post #4

I do not know. We always had "DevOPS" aka sysadmin that knew C,perl and bunch of others. Then it became too much for a single person to know everything and we invented "more ops" and "more programmer". Now we have better tools albeit more complex and we have decided that we again can have this "DevOPS" person whatever that means. But again we are facing this dilemma when there are literally thousands of different too…

> But again we are facing this dilemma when there are literally thousands of different tools and ecosystems and you just simply cannot be an EXPERT or even ADVANCED in most of them. Though there are only a handful of ideas and principles, and all of these thousands of different tools are just reimplementations of some of them, and usually not too fancy at that.

That's correct but you can't learn all the nuances and specifics of every tool there is.

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#8
post #4

I do not know. We always had "DevOPS" aka sysadmin that knew C,perl and bunch of others. Then it became too much for a single person to know everything and we invented "more ops" and "more programmer". Now we have better tools albeit more complex and we have decided that we again can have this "DevOPS" person whatever that means. But again we are facing this dilemma when there are literally thousands of different too…

DevOps is a cultural idea. It's supposed to be the collaboration between sysops and dev, in order to break down the traditional silos. Having a "devops" team or role creates a new silo, hence the reason it's BS to have it.

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#9

Having worked on over 100 DevOps initiatives, I'm inclined to disagree. 8 years into DevOps, automation, cloud computing etc, it's time to accept that DevOps is a specialism and a function that companies - especially big ones - need to put into place in order to adopt the principles. See here for further thoughts - https://devops.com/im-happy-devops-engineer-job-title/

If you have the job title "DevOps X", then you've missed the point of DevOps.

The entire thing was brought in to remove the silos between SysOps and Dev. If you have people in the "DevOps" role, then you've just created a new silo, which means you just have traditional SysOps with a new and fashionable, but less meaningful name.

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#10

Having worked on over 100 DevOps initiatives, I'm inclined to disagree. 8 years into DevOps, automation, cloud computing etc, it's time to accept that DevOps is a specialism and a function that companies - especially big ones - need to put into place in order to adopt the principles. See here for further thoughts - https://devops.com/im-happy-devops-engineer-job-title/

I don't really care about titles so if calling someone a DevOps Engineer helps them and connects the right engineers to the right roles, great. Fighting against this use of "DevOps" would be like fighting against how the word "literally" is misused to mean "figuratively".

However for me, "DevOps" is more than just CI/CD and tech automation, it's about not working in silos and having empathy for others in the team (and the customer!). This is a culture and mindset that everyone in the team needs to have.

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